


sensi scripsi scivi

by futureboy



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Marijuana, Richie Tozier is His Own Warning, The Kissing Bridge (IT), Truth Serum, Truth Spells, Underage Smoking, he's pretty gross but it's good old predictable trashmouth grossness, i love that that's a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 11:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21136190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futureboy/pseuds/futureboy
Summary: “Jeez. Tell us what you really think, Rich,” says Bill.“I am, that’s the problem. Sorry for swearing in your holy house, Stan, my ma always says I’ll end up staining her kitchen walls black. I’m hungry. My hand stings. Do any of you guys wanna play milk caps?”[Richie loses the ability to lie. The other Losers are sick of him already… So they call for backup whilst they wait it out.]





	sensi scripsi scivi

“Hello, Kaspbrak residence--”

_ “You’d better get over here,” _ says Stanley, and Eddie resists the urge to roll his eyes. That’s Stan’s ‘tolerating bullshit’ voice. _ “Richie’s lost his freaking mind and Bill’s ten seconds away from killing him--” _

“Well, I can’t get over there _ that _ fast,” he says.

_ “...Just hurry the hell up, okay?” _

“Fine,” Eddie bites back, and puts the receiver down as firmly as he can without damaging the handset. Another day, another goddamn Tozier drama. It’s one in the afternoon and he’s already wishing for the chance to take a nap. Richie has the unfortunate effect of turning Eddie’s sleeping habits into those of a toddler, instead of the sophomore he actually is, and at some point, he hopes his idiot friend will at least _ try _to catch up to tenth grade with the rest of them.

By the time he manages to cycle over to Stan’s house, he’s taken several deep breaths in preparation for the shitstorm that’s a-brewing. Mike and Ben are sat on the steps outside, for god’s sake, it’s already a bad fucking omen.

“Whatcha up to?” he asks, kicking the stand down on his bicycle.

Mike looks up from Ben’s notebook. “We’re planning a nuclear bunker,” he says sheepishly, squinting against the sun. “Just in case. Y’know?”

Ben shrugs. Jesus fuckin’ Christ.

“I _ so _wish I’d stayed home,” says Eddie, and isn’t fussed about gingerly stepping over them on his way inside.

Heart sinking as he follows a thin commotion to the dining room, he traipses through the Uris’s immaculate house and further still into the kitchen. He can see Bill sitting on the counter, his face in his hands, through the cracked open door.

_ Hey, guys, what’s up? _

\- is what he’d _ like _ to say. Things rarely go Eddie’s way, though, because when he opens the kitchen door, the scene attacks his eyes like a watch face catching the sun. Bev, Stan, and Bill are congregated in the space around Richie, sat on a chair in the middle of the room; Bev and Richie are similar levels of grubby. She seems to be taking notes in a little reporter’s journal.

“I once ate nothing but walnuts for two days because I heard they helped you put on weight,” he’s babbling, “but then I shit myself half a pound lighter, because I’m a genius who ate _ nothing but walnuts for two days solid_\--”

“Doesn’t sound solid to m-me,” Bill mutters. Stanley lets out an oddly high-pitched titter.

“I like your mom’s kitchen curtains, Stan, they’re nice. Purple is my favourite colour. Especially in the Barrens when the day’s about to fuck off into night, and you’re riding your bike under it, that’s my favorite. I’ve got so many favorites. You’re all my favorites. We should definitely get a yearbook picture together.”

It just doesn’t _ stop_. In the weirdest, most unsettling way, too - because Richie’s pretty non-stop anyway, but he very rarely goes blue in the face because of it. He looks like he’s forgetting to breathe.

Well, if he’s not showing any signs of shutting the fuck up in the near future, then the point of cutting into the conversation seems to be dealer’s choice.

“What the fuck is this?”

Heads turn.

Eddie’s still in the open doorway, his fingertips resting on the handle, and his pulse resting at about ten beats per minute. This looked _ bad_. This looked like, who knew, jury versus criminal levels of bad or something.

Richie only manages to be speechless for about half a second. “Oh my god, I can’t _ believe _ this. I say that I _ don’t _ wanna let him see me like this, and you guys send fuckin’ word to the literal opposite?! You motherfuckers _ suck_!”

He draws back from his scowling reaction to slip a smile Eddie’s way, at a relatively normal volume that gives them all whiplash--

“hey, Eds, what’s bappin’? It’s nice to, like, see you, but…. you’re gonna wish you weren’t here in about thirty seconds, haha. Just a heads up.”

Eddie blinks. The remaining Losers are stunned into silence by the sheer torrent of consciousness, and the way he’d switched from extremely intense to friendly, even casual, in a snap of the fingers.

“Anyway, back to the fact that none of you other cockbrains listen to a word I say pretty much ever, but you--”

“He and Bev were smoking,” Stan mutters over the top of the torrent. “They snuck down to the dump and that police officer was there, so they hid in one of those crates in the big pile. Except Richie cut his finger on a piece of glass or something, and he’s been like this the whole time since--”

“Excuse _ you_, Stanley,” Richie says loudly. He’s only just noticed they were having a separate conversation. “I’ll have you know that Bev said it was one of the medical waste bins, not like a common old _ crate_.”

And then he swiftly returns to explain to Bev and Bill the plot of the second Terminator film, in extremely opinionated depth.

“You’re an actual disease,” Stanley tells him flatly.

Richie doesn’t hear him.

He shakes his head - a little curl escapes, and falls over his left eyebrow. “I know he’s usually all talk anyway, but this is _ really _ ramping it up to eleven. He hasn’t even poked or prodded anyone, or put Ben in a headlock, or jumped on Mike’s shoulders or _ anything_. The only muscle that’s been working is his freaking mouth.”

“You think he picked up something?” says Eddie, thinking about all the diseases that could quickly sap someone’s energy. He’s feeling rather faint all of a sudden. “It doesn’t _ sound _ like tetanus or rabies…”

“Bill says it sounds like truth serum.”

Eddie fixes Stan with an absolute _ look. _

_ Truth serum. _ Really.

After a few seconds, the best he can come up with is a suspicious: “..._ no_.”

Stan throws his hands up. “It wasn’t _ me _ who said it, I don’t know. Maybe? What do you think it was?” 

“I think Richie should probably go to the goddamn ER,” Eddie says seriously.

Richie overhears this, and supplies a reliable string of words in response: “no can do, Eddie K!” he grins. “We were trespassing with intent to smoke, and if I go the emergency room, they’ll wanna know what happened. And if not them, then my parents. And Bev’s old man. Capisce?”

Beverly grins the most sheepish grin she’ll ever do. Bill’s fingers are threatening to rip right through his shorts with tension.

“He’s got a superpower,” Eddie says to Stan, “there’s no other explanation. He’s got the power to make every _ fucking _ thing as difficult as possible. Congratulations, Fuck-Shit-Up-Man, you’ve completely outdone yourself this time! Gotham is _ saved_.”

Richie tilts his head like a delighted labrador.

“You’re so funny when you get snarky, Eds,” he grins, and Eddie presses his toes into the insides of his shoes _ hard _ to distract himself from blushing. “Can you imagine if I really had superpowers? I could have super healing, and then your mom wouldn’t be such a horse’s ass about letting you outside. That would be pretty sweet. And I could use super strength to help Mike with all his sheep--”

Bill slips from his perch on the counter, his All-Stars slapping against the floor - he actually takes Eddie by the elbows to plead with him. “I’m b-begging you,” he says desperately, “we’ve tried all s-s-sortsa stuff, but he just won’t _ lie_.”

“Or _ stop_,” Stan supplies.

“I need a b-break,” Bill says, and he laughs a little hysterically.

Eddie feels almost sorry for him, until he realises that means he’s on fuckin’ _ babysitting duty_. “Are you sure he can’t lie?” he asks suspiciously. “He’s bad at it, sure, but goddamn if he doesn’t love to practice--”

“He almost threw up trying to maintain that Bill’s name was short for ‘Billizabeth’,” Stan snorts. “Then when he stopped, he immediately told us all that he took a wizz in Derry Township Public Pool _ last week_, twice, because he couldn’t be bothered to climb out and then back in again.”

“That’s _ so _ gross.”

“Right?” Bill says. “And he t-told us his middle name. It’s _ Earl_.”

“Hey, I can’t help what comes out of my mouth right now,” Richie interrupts, “even more than usual, might I add. My old man’s name is _ Wentworth_, how about you cut a fella some slack?”

Eddie hadn’t known that Richie’s middle name was Earl.

Yeesh. Maybe this really was a serious problem.

The Losers all seem to be considering cutting him some slack, actually, reminded that he’d accidentally spilled his guts about something that was clearly private - until Richie decides to go off on a ranting tangent, and calls Bev’s father the shortest, filthiest name he can think of. Beverly gives his arm a half hearted slap.

“_Beep-beep_, Richie!”

“Sorry, missie,” he beams, “I know you don’t like that word, but I happen to fucking _ love _ it, so I’m just not gonna stop using it ever, basically.”

“Jeez. Tell us what you really think, Rich,” says Bill.

“I am, that’s the problem. Sorry for swearing in your holy house, Stan, my ma always says I’ll end up staining her kitchen walls black. I’m hungry. My hand stings. Do any of you guys wanna play milk caps?”

Jeez… This was too much.

Time to intervene. Eddie takes Richie by the scruff of his collar and glares at the others: “we’re going for a walk and _ all of you owe me_,” he warns darkly, dragging a still-jabbering Trashmouth out of Stanley’s kitchen.

The breath of relief is audible, and the weight of it feels like he’s opened an airlock.

Eddie’s friends are kind of exhausting.

The two of them are launched into the vacuum of Derry, and Eddie leads the way. He’s thinking that they can do a lap around the Barrens, dipping down over the bridge and coming back around in a big loop - it’ll take over an hour, at least, and he’s hoping that tiring out Richie’s feet might help to tire out his freaking mouth, too.

He’s a little in awe of how Richie won’t shut the fuck up.

“I told everyone I got my repetitive strain injury from jerking off, but really it was from playing too much Tetris. I don’t play that game anymore, it hurt me.”

“You have the brain capacity to play Tetris?” Eddie asks. “I wasn’t sure if you knew any shapes, Rich.”

“I really like it when you’re a little mean to me,” says Richie, who promptly claps both hands over his mouth and turns scarlet.

Eddie definitely does not trip over his own feet.

“Shit,” says Richie, his hands moving unconsciously, smoothing down the front of his shirt and his nerves at the same time. “This is _ exactly _ why I didn’t want to see you today. I was worried you’d be offended if I said so, but _ shit_, I can’t do this, I’m gonna say so much stupid crap that you’ll finally want to be rid of me forever--”

“Richie,” Eddie says carefully, “you’ve said a _ lot _ of stupid crap, right from the moment we first met, and I’m still right here where I wanna be. It’s up to _ me _ to decide if I’m tired of your bullshit - not you.”

“Right,” he says. He doesn’t so much adjust his glasses as wiggle them frantically with a shaky, shaky grip: “that’s for the stuff I actually say out loud, though. This is different.”

The two of them step off the sidewalk, having finally reached the point where the pedestrian route ends and the road carries on forever out of town, and start approaching the bridge.

“What’s so different about me and not the others?”

“I don’t wanna go this way,” Richie says, in a small voice.

“Richie?”

“Please,” he says. He sounds close to tears. “Not the Kissing Bridge, dude.”

Eddie stops when he feels a grasp on the back of his shirt trying to restrain him - this day was just getting weirder and weirder. “What the hell is going on, Richie?” he asks, trying to be soft, “you’re acting _ totally _bizarre, even for someone dosed up on truth serum.”

“Truth serum?!” Richie splutters. It’s like he’s forgotten he was sad only ten seconds before. “Who said anything about truth serum?”

“Well,” says Eddie, a surge of annoyance streaking through him, “what the fuck do _ you _ think it is?! You were sat in Stan’s kitchen telling everyone about his mother’s curtains _ without _making any gross jokes, it was concerning, quite frankly--”

But Richie’s bent over double with laughter, clutching his belt like he might cackle his jeans loose. “Truth serum!” he gasps. “Did Bev play along with that? That’s fucking golden, dude, we just smoked a new strain of dope in the dump.”

“Are you _ serious_?!” Eddie explodes. “Richie! You told everyone about your pool-pissing issues because you were unusually high?! I’m gonna fucking murder you!”

“I’m not even that high,” he grins, bracing himself on his knees. “I just can’t stop saying stuff. The lying guilt is unreal, man, I can’t believe it--”

“I can’t believe no-one just asked you straight up,” Eddie mutters, and starts walking again. He doesn’t even care if Richie’s following him. “Now I’m stuck babysitting your idiot tush for the next hour. You’re a slimy moron smoker _ fuck_, Richard Earl Tozier--”

“Oh, no,” Richie says - there’s the pitter-patter of rubber soles on asphalt as he jogs to catch up. “No, no full names, Eds, _ please _\- and god, can we go some other way? If we go on that fucking bridge then I’m gonna do something I regret, like telling you how much I like you or something, and then I’m gonna feel shitty for the rest of my definitely-not-ladykilling days.”

Eddie halts so suddenly that Richie almost falls over him.

He meets earnest, bottle-glassed eyes: “huh,” he says slowly, and stares him down. “Yeah, it’s a good job you didn’t say that.”

Richie’s realisation creeps up his neck in anxious, feverish red.

“Oh, fuck,” he says simply.

And then he averts his eyes, and doesn’t say anything else.

Eddie can’t think of anything in reply - he’s as stunned as Richie is by this revelation, and the fact that the truth-telling spell seems to have been broken somewhat is really an extra slap in the face neither of them needed. No wonder Richie’s a trembling fidgety fuck. He’s been _ hiding_.

He feels curious and kinda mean, now.

“Why would the bridge make you say that?” he eventually settles on.

“Eddie--”

“I’m still here, stupid. I wanna know.”

Richie’s front teeth poke out when he bites down on his bottom lip, dragging pressure over the skin like the pain might calm his nerves, and does a baffling little Riverdance-style scuffle with his shoes before he answers. It’s almost funny.

“I wrote our initials on there,” he mumbles.

“You what?” Eddie balks. “When?”

More hopping and scuffing with his heels. “Shit, Eddie,” he says exasperatedly, “it was _ that _ summer-- I felt it, so I did it, and that’s all there is to it. It was, like, two years ago and I’m dumb as hell. _ And _ I did it with my knife, so it’s probably gonna still be there, and I probably would’ve seen it and immediately pointed it out to you. Maybe I really _ am _that superhero who messes it all up.”

_ I felt it, so I did it, and that’s all there is to it. _

Everything is very abruptly simplified to that one spontaneous phrase.

Yeah, Eddie thinks, struck blind with a sudden clarity - he’s sure his face looks fucking ridiculous right now - it’s as easy as that. No explanation needed, no excuses and nothing owed to anyone at all. He can do whatever he wants and _ say _whatever he wants.

The truth’s been there the whole time No-one had to say it out loud, but that’s what it had come to, and that was just something that Eddie would have to deal with.

He carries on towards the Kissing Bridge.

“Eds? Eddie? Where are you going?”

“I have no idea,” he says shortly. “You should be leading the way, seeing as you know where you wrote our initials.”

He can almost hear Richie’s brain kick into gear again. There’s more stumbling from behind him. “What...?” he says finally, “what are you-- you wanna _ see?”_

Eddie marches on. “Of course I wanna see, numbnuts, you can’t tell me something like _ that _and then expect me to take your word for it--”

“I can’t lie, though,” Richie says. His eyes have gone all wild with confusion, as though the whole series of events have sent him into overdrive. “You know I can’t, my filter or whatever, it hasn’t come back yet. And I wouldn’t, I-- I _ wouldn’t_. Not about this.”

The wood beneath their feet echoes as Eddie clomps his way on the panelling, Richie falling into step so close that their shoulders knock together. There’s warm sunshine falling on his shoulders, on his face, on the whole deserted stretch of road and on both of them. _ Actions_, Eddie thinks, _ it’s something about actions, something silent and something loud all at once_\- 

So he forgets all about spelling out any stupid decisions he might make, and swats at Richie’s too-close hand, until his dumbass best friend finally gets the hint and lets Eddie tangle their fingers together. It’s the hand that he cut open in the dump; Eddie’s finding it hard to care.

“...Oh,” says Richie.

“Shut up,” says Eddie, and mostly means it. “Are you gonna show me, or what?”

“Depends what ‘what’ is,” Richie mutters, but there’s a smile curling at the corners of his lips, and he tugs Eddie over to the other side.

It’s shadier over here. Cool shadows, cast by clusters of oak leaves above them, lap at their feet like waves. It’s been painted over in an ugly shade of beige, but the indentations are still clear: **R + E**, it reads. Eddie stands in front of his respective letter, and Richie faces the ‘R’, and their hands swing uncertainly between the ‘plus’ symbol.

“Still feeling it?”

“What,” Richie says faintly, “high?”

“No, you idiot,” Eddie says, and lets go of Richie’s hand to rummage in his pockets. “You felt it, you did it, and if you _ still _ feel it then _ I’m _ gonna recarve it.”

He has an _ aha! _ moment when he finally pulls out his house key, and crouches, brow furrowed furiously.

“Recarve it?”

He scrapes a layer of paint out of the backbone of the ‘R’. “I don’t want it to fade away,” he murmurs.

“Eddie,” Richie says - he can hear his delighted, stupidass grin, despite not actually being able to see him - “what are you fucking _ talking _ about? It’s not gonna _ buff out_, it’s a fence--”

“I just have to, okay?” Eddie snaps. He doesn’t feel like explaining that he wanted to carve it back, like a physical way to show he was serious about returning his feelings, so he digs out the splinters in the seething quiet.

When he’s finished, he stands up, dusts off his legs, and surveys his handiwork.

Richie nudges his way against his side.

“If I ever get a phone call off Stan again saying you’ve lost your shit,” Eddie warns, “then I’m coming down here with a chainsaw to go full anti-graffiti.”

“Noted,” Richie says. He looks like he’s been hit over the head with a skillet.

“Then I’m giving it to Bill, so he can stem his headaches at their source.”

“My face?”

“Yup,” says Eddie.

Richie’s grin could power all of Maine for a whole year. “I promise never to try anything new at the dump again,” he says sagely.

And really, it’s the most honest kind of promise that Eddie’s gonna get, so he’ll take it. “You’d better not,” he says, resting twitchy fingers against the curve of Richie’s jaw, and tilting his face down to a more suitable angle. “I don’t wanna hear about anything else you’ve been keeping to yourself. It might not be as nice as this.”

“I’m kinda glad I said something,” Richie breathes.

Eddie catches sight of a sheen of dustiness, reflected from the light dancing over Richie’s glasses, as he leans in. Behind it, Richie’s eyes are lidded. He wouldn’t lie, not about this, and Eddie’s inclined to side with the sentiment.

“Me too,” he says quietly.

Richie tastes like lingering smoke, and blessed fucking silence. His glasses make a hard line between their noses, and his fringe tickles against Eddie’s forehead.

The next five minutes are the quietest he’s been all goddamn summer.

**Author's Note:**

> Ta for reading, folks. Comments and kudos, as always, are deeply appreciated. I'm also on tumblr @futureboy-ao3! ☺


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